In Photos: John Cooper Clarke @ The Button Factory, Dublin (11.11.11)

Legendary Mancunian punk poet John Cooper Clarke returned to Irish shores recently on a nationwide tour that stopped off for a Friday night stand at Dublin's Button Factory. Now sixty-two years young, the bard of Salford let loose with his trademark mix of working men's club one-liners and machine-gun bursts of razor-sharp poems such as 'Hire Car', 'Evidently Chickentown' and 'Who Stole Bongo's Trousers?' (the last-named an uproarious meditation on the U2 frontman's globetrotting hypocrisy wardrobe).

After revisiting the classic urban nightmare of 'Beasley Street', JCC then treated the fully-seated crowd to a timely rendition of 'Beasley Boulevard' - a gentrified, boom-time stroll through a world in which "everyone's on TV". He may look a bit like an inside-out Ronnie Wood on a bad hair day nowadays, but even his newer material packs more punch and swagger than most so-called rock'n'roll/post-punk veterans have managed in decades.

Colm Kelly battled constant fits of laughter to bring us the following photos from down the front - you can load a slideshow of his shots simply by clicking on any of the thumbnail images below.